The Central Bureau Of Investigation (CBI) probing the larger conspiracy angle in the Saradha ponzi scheme case, has sought a meeting with four IPS officers including the current city Commissioner of Police (CP) and Additional Commissioner of Police (ACP). They have been asked to make themselves available by 24 August.
A source close to the central agency said that the four IPS officers were among the members of a Special Investigation Team (SIT), which was set up by the state to probe the Saradha scam after it broke in the year 2013.
An informed source in the central agency said that a mail had also been sent to state Director General (DG) of Police Mr Virendra on 18 August in this regard, seeking his permission. “But till date, we did not get any response from the DGP or the members of the SIT who were summoned,” an officer said on condition of anonymity.
The CBI sleuths are seeking to meet the SIT members to elicit information regarding documents and papers related to the Saradah realty business, some “hard disks and pen drives” which the agency claims to have found missing and some documents, which the CBI had alleged had either been deliberately withheld or tampered with by the quartet.
The four officers who have been summoned by the agency are Mr Rajiv Kumar, (CP, Kolkata police), Mr Pallab Kanti Ghosh, former Jt CP (crime), Mr Tamal Basu (IG Rail) and Veneet Goyal, additional police commissioner. A CBI source, meanwhile, claimed that Mr Rajiv Kumar, who was summoned yesterday, did not show up.
A CBI source claimed that the reasons behind summoning the four IPS officers are that they were the members of the SIT, headed by Mr Rajiv Kumar, who was then the commissioner of Bidhannagar police commssionerate, set up to probe the Saradha scam.
Though Mr Kumar was summoned before by the central agency twice before, every time he gave the meet a skip. Later, it became a flash point between the CBI and Mr Kumar. The matter had come to a head after the city police chief allegedly challenged the agency’s “summons” in a missive addressed to the director of the CBI, calling it “politically motivated”.
Later, the city police also went after a CBI officer and interrogated him at a local police station allegedly in a case relating to vandalism at a office of the Rose Valley group, also under scrutiny for ponzi schemes, in the city.
Peeved at this development, the premier probe agency had moved the Supreme Court seeking its ruling over the questioning of the Commissioner of Police, who was the then commissioner of the Bidhannagar Commissionerate when the SIT was formed, regarding the alleged missing hard disks, pen drives and other documents that the agency had sought.